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Morning Brief

MP holds bank sit-in, Iran-Saudi reconciliation hailed, drug smuggling crackdown: Everything you need to know to start your Monday

Here’s what happened over the weekend and what to expect today, Monday, March 13

MP holds bank sit-in, Iran-Saudi reconciliation hailed, drug smuggling crackdown: Everything you need to know to start your Monday

A branch of the BLC Bank in Saida, South Lebanon. (Courtesy of: Muntasser Abdallah/L'Orient-Le Jour)

A depositor and his brother, Jezzine MP Charbel Massaad, on Friday held a brief sit-in at a South Lebanon bank, demanding access to a delayed dollar payment following the conversion at the Sayrafa rate of a recently deposited lira amount. Charbel and Karim Massaad left the Saida branch of BLC Bank, which blamed the delay on Banque du Liban, with a “promise” that they would receive the funds today. BDL Circular No. 161 allows depositors to exchange a limited amount of Lebanese lira to dollars at the central bank Sayrafa exchange rate, which was nearly doubled, to LL70,000 to the dollar, last week amid heavy parallel market volatility. As of this morning, the Sayrafa rate is around LL19,000 below the parallel market rate. Last December, facing a then-record low for the lira on the parallel market, the central bank also implemented a hike to the Sayrafa rate coupled with an increase to the amounts depositors can convert — which, despite offering brief respite to the flailing local currency, left some customers unable to withdraw the promised dollars and feeling as though they “were a victim of another scheme.” Protests demanding funds at the Sayrafa rate, particularly by public sector employees, are the latest in a series of depositor actions against banks after last year’s spree of holdups demanding deposits placed before the implementation of informal capital control measures at the onset of the economic crisis in 2019. The Association of Banks in Lebanon announced that its open-ended strike would resume on Tuesday, contesting, among other things, lawsuits by depositors demanding to be paid in dollars.

The joint Palestinian factions in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, close to Saida in South Lebanon, announced Sunday that they would turn in the alleged killer of a Fatah Movement member to the Lebanese Army. The suspect, Osbat al-Ansar member Khaled Ala' al-Dine, nicknamed Khomeini, is thought to have killed a Fatah movement member during clashes earlier this month that also injured seven other people. Tensions have run high since the incident, leading to three additional injuries and the suspension of classes in educational institutions inside and near the camp as well as the activities of the UN's Palestinian refugees agency, UNRWA. Osbat al-Ansar’s refusal to turn-in Ala’ al-Dine was linked to the tensions by Abd al-Hadi al-Assadi, the commander of the joint security forces in Ain al-Hilweh. Approximately 54,000 Palestinian refugees live in the Ain al-Hilweh camp — the largest in Lebanon — along with thousands of other Palestinians who fled the war in Syria. The camp is regularly the scene of armed clashes between rival groups.

Lebanese officials hailed Iran and Saudi Arabia’s reconciliation, which augurs “a positive impact on all regional relations in the coming period,” caretaker Foreign Affairs Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said Friday. Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati echoed Bou Habib’s sentiment. Iran and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement in Beijing on Friday to restore diplomatic ties between the two countries — more than six years after Iranian protesters attacked their country’s Saudi Embassy decrying the execution of Shiite Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Riyadh, estranging the two countries. “In theory, [the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement] could pave the way for an improvement in the situation in Lebanon,” says the Carnegie Foundation’s Michael Young — in one of the milder takes voiced amid unbridled optimism from political analysts — expecting that Hezbollah could gain Saudi favor in the presidential elections in return for concessions on captagon trafficking and support for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Lebanese Forces MP Razi el-Hajj, however, expects that the détente will lead Iran to bend Hezbollah’s ear to abandon “Sleiman Frangieh’s candidacy and stop blocking the presidential election.”

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday announced the implementation of a port “container control program” to crack down on smuggling and “restore the full movement of [Lebanese] exports, especially fruits and vegetables, to the Arab markets.” Mikati hoped that Lebanon’s “commitment to improving border security … will send a strong signal to the international community that will help us seek economic advancement.” In April 2021, Saudi Arabia embargoed Lebanese agricultural products after the discovery of captagon, an illicit stimulant, smuggled in a shipment of pomegranates from Lebanon. “The [Internal Security Forces] made 1,041 drug seizures, arrested 1,512 people involved in trafficking, and confiscated more than 15 million captagon pills and six tons of cannabis, preventing the export of these products, especially to Arab countries,” caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said, tallying the results of seizures made in 2022 during a meeting with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdel Aziz Ben Saoud Ben Nayef Ben Abdel Aziz al-Saoud, on the sidelines of a conference of Arab interior ministers in Tunisia.

In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from over the weekend: “‘LL1,500 for the kishik manoushe? We are no longer used to it’”

Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz

A depositor and his brother, Jezzine MP Charbel Massaad, on Friday held a brief sit-in at a South Lebanon bank, demanding access to a delayed dollar payment following the conversion at the Sayrafa rate of a recently deposited lira amount. Charbel and Karim Massaad left the Saida branch of BLC Bank, which blamed the delay on Banque du Liban, with a “promise” that they would receive the funds...